Software vendors often sell and distribute software using a vendor-specific architecture. For example, a software vendor may provide an online/internet store to process payment of a particular software package and, upon payment confirmation, direct the user to a download area for delivery of the particular software package. The software vendor, therefore, maintains the software package's vending system as well as its storage and distribution system.
When these software vendors offer software packages from multiple software companies, integration of the software packages into the software vendor's system is necessary. Such integration of software packages may require uploading the new software packages into the vendor's storage space, maintaining the storage space, and in some cases integrating provider-specific interfaces into the vendor specific architecture. Maintaining such an architecture and integrating such software packages may be time consuming, complex, and costly, particularly when the software vendor carries hundreds of software packages.
In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical or similar elements. Additionally, generally, the left-most digit(s) of a reference number identifies the drawing in which the reference number first appears.